Word: qaeda
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...Laden's last confirmed presence was at the siege of Tora Bora, in eastern Afghanistan, in December 2001, when the al-Qaeda chief and dozens of his men bribed Afghan mercenaries hired by U.S. special forces to let them escape, probably into the Pakistani mountains directly across the border. A Pakistani intelligence officer who was the main liaison with the Taliban before 9/11 tells TIME that he informed then President Pervez Musharraf that bin Laden, who was said to be gravely ill, most likely died several weeks after Tora Bora and was buried in a hastily dug, unmarked grave...
...insecurity in the region? Two reasons are terrorists and drug smugglers, who have been attracted to West Africa by its weak governments and whose presence has weakened them further. First, the region has become a staging ground for operations by militant Islamists calling themselves al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group largely made up of Algerian fighters who fled south in the late 1990s after losing a decade-long war against the government. AQIM specializes in the kidnapping - and occasional execution - of foreigners, something that prompted the Paris-Dakar rally to move to South America...
...recordings purportedly from bin Laden have surfaced, but very few videos. The last video was in September 2007, and showed him looking much the same as before 9/11, perhaps a bit more gaunt and with a whiter beard. The recordings could have been faked to inspire Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, but a jihadi source in Islamabad tells TIME that he heard from a trusted but secondhand source that bin Laden was alive as recently as two years ago. "Since then," he says, "nothing...
...counterterrorism experts insist that even if bin Laden is alive, he is probably too deep in hiding to be anything other than a symbolic figurehead for al-Qaeda and the many jihadi groups it has spawned globally. Day-to-day management of the operation is said to be handled by his No. 2, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was nearly killed in a drone attack in the Pakistani tribal territory several years back. Nevertheless, the capture of top Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders in Karachi may help solve the mystery: Is bin Laden still alive...
...military coup that deposed Mamadou Tandja, the President of Niger, on Thursday, Feb. 18, could be seen as yet another putsch in a remote West African country, save for two things contributing to a growing instability in the region: cocaine and al-Qaeda. The coup is just the latest in a series in West Africa, making the region an increasing focus for Western governments in their ongoing battles against terrorism and drugs...